Walsh fastest in tight opening qualifying

Ash Walsh has set the fastest time in opening qualifying for Round 3 of the 2017 CAMS Australian GT Championship at Barbagallo.

The Supabarn Supermakets Audi driver set his best time mid-way through the 20-minute session, before climbing out of the car, confident with his 55.428s lap.

“We were really happy rolling in to qualifying; we could really hit the ground running,” Walsh explained.

“The car is very well suited to the track. We test here a couple of weeks ago, so we were able to do evaluation of different setups.”

Second fastest in the session was Walsh’s Audi Sport Customer Racing Australia team-mate Kelvin van der Linde, who progressively improved his times throughout the session to record a best of 55.717s.

Audi also claimed third place with Daniel Gaunt (Kentucky Fried Chicken Audi), who edged out local favourite Peter Major (PM Motorsport Lamborghini), though the pair were split by less than half a tenth of a second.

Having set the pace early in the session, Roger Lago set a 55.981s lap to be fifth fastest, the JBS Australia Lamborghini proving fastest of all through the middle part of the lap.

A tightly packed group followed Brad Shiels in the AMAC Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan, who was little more than a tenth of a second adrift of Lago, ahead of an incredibly tight pack of six cars.

Covered by less than half a second, Liam Talbot (MEGA Racing Porsche) in seventh was closely followed by Fraser Ross (Total/Opti-Coat McLaren) and Steve Richards (BMW Team SRM).